Monday, March 20, 2017

Mosul Campaign Day 154, March 19, 2017

Map of progress in Old City west Mosul. Green is liberated
areas. Red is contested. Tan is under Islamic State control. Blue in right hand
corner is the Tigris River. (Iraqi Day)

Fighting in the Old City went back and forth. The Golden
Division attacking from the west took the Nablus
area. There were renewed clashes in Bab al-Tob, which
was just declared officially freed
for the second time yesterday. Cramped streets, poor weather, tough defenses by
the Islamic State have all slowed down progress in the city. The immediate goal
remains taking the Grand Mosque where IS leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi declared
the caliphate in 2014. After that is taken there will still be the majority of
the Old City to be assaulted.

A month into the west Mosul campaign and everyone is
realizing that there has been a huge civilian casualty rate. Medics told the Associated
Press that they had seen 750 civilian deaths since the operation started on
February 19. That compared to 1,600 dead and wounded hospitals received in east
Mosul. The Iraqi Observatory for Human Rights accused
the Iraqi forces (ISF) and Coalition of disregarding civilians trapped in the
city with their use of heavy shelling and air strikes on residential areas. The
United Nations was equally concerned.
The Iraqi and Coalition forces have admitted to using more artillery, mortars,
rockets, planes and helicopters in the current operation. The U.S. responded
to the criticism by saying its precision munitions was reducing collateral
damage. While that might mean hitting targets better, it ignored IS’s current
tactics. The insurgents are constantly attacking and withdrawing and then
moving back into positions. They are also forcing civilians to stay in their
homes while they are using them as fire positions, and making them withdraw
with them as well. As a civilian told Reuters, IS would
set up a sniper position on top of a building, take a few shots and then move
on, and then later the building would be hit while civilians were inside the
whole time. The heavy toll this is taking on civilians is a major reason why so
many people are fleeing the city.

Outside of Mosul the 9th Division and Hashd were
active again taking
two towns
north of Badush. These forces were supposed to open a third front in west
Mosul, but at the pace their moving that could come pretty late in the campaign
if it ever does. They could stay on the perimeter and ensure the encirclement
of the city.

Finally, Pulse
News talked with two families that returned to west Mosul. They had both
fled, but found no room in the camps and were forced to go back. One person
said he found several families packed into one tent at a camp. One family had
re-opened their business inside the city, but they had little to sell. They’d
gotten some goods from Hamam al-Alil to the south, but it wasn’t much. The
camps in the south are now overflowing, but the security forces keep directing
people there. Hundreds of families are now living outside the facilities,
probably out in the elements, and the ISF has plans to allow some to move on to
Baghdad. This is while there are thousands of spots in Kurdistan, but the
government is sending hardly anyone there even though aid groups have
petitioned them to do so.

Iraqi Red Crescent Society, “Increasing in the numbers of
displaced form the right side of Mosul to more than 100,000 people and the
teams of the Iraqi Red Crescent are making extraordinary efforts to relief
them,” 3/19/17

Iraq History Timeline

About Me

Musings On Iraq was started in 2008 to explain the political, economic, security and cultural situation in Iraq via original articles and interviews. I have written for the Jamestown Foundation, Tom Ricks’ Best Defense at Foreign Policy and the Daily Beast, and was responsible for a chapter in the book Volatile Landscape: Iraq And Its Insurgent Movements. My work has been published in Iraq via NRT, AK News, Al-Mada, Sotaliraq, All Iraq News, and Ur News all in Iraq. I was interviewed on BBC Radio 5, Radio Sputnik, CCTV and TRT World News TV, and have appeared in CNN, the Christian Science Monitor, The National, Columbia Journalism Review, Mother Jones, PBS’ Frontline, the Center for Strategic and International Studies, the Institute for the Study of War, Radio Free Iraq, Rudaw, and others. I have also been cited in Iraq From war To A New Authoritarianism by Toby Dodge, Imagining the Nation Nationalism, Sectarianism and Socio-Political Conflict in Iraq by Harith al-Qarawee, ISIS Inside the Army of Terror by Michael Weiss and Hassan Hassahn, The Rise of the Islamic State by Patrick Cocburn, and others. If you wish to contact me personally my email is: motown67@aol.com